Head of Strategic Startups

Anthropic•San Francisco, CA

1d•Hybrid

About The Position

As Head of Strategic Startups at Anthropic, you will own the strategy, organization, and commercial outcomes for Anthropic's relationships with the world's most important AI-native startups. This is the segment where the next generation of category-defining companies is being built on Claude, and where Anthropic's commercial, product, and partnership decisions compound fastest. You will lead a team of Account Executives who own Anthropic's most strategic AI-native accounts, and be accountable for a revenue line spanning expansion, retention, and net-new strategic wins. Beyond running the business, you will define what "strategic" means for Anthropic in the startup ecosystem: which companies we bet on, how we structure partnerships with them, how we engage investors and accelerators, and how the signal from this segment shapes our product roadmap and go-to-market model. You will be a member of the GTM leadership team and a visible voice for Anthropic in the startup and venture community, helping ensure that the companies defining the future of AI choose to build it safely, and with us.

Requirements

15+ years of experience in enterprise or technical software sales, with 7+ years leading sales teams
Have been a founder or have worked previously as a Business Development leader securing large contracts.
Owned a significant revenue line with full accountability for plan, forecast, and results, and have a track record of consistently outperforming it
Built or materially scaled a sales or account management organization, including designing coverage models, compensation plans, and operating rhythms
Deep, first-hand familiarity with the startup ecosystem, including relationships with founders, venture investors, and accelerators, and an instinct for identifying which early-stage companies will become the ones that matter
Sold or led sales of technical, consumption-based, or platform products (APIs, infrastructure, developer tools, ML/AI), and are credible in conversations with technical founders and CTOs
Structured and closed complex, non-standard commercial and partnership agreements at the executive level
Strong cross-functional leader who has influenced product, pricing, and go-to-market decisions well beyond your own organization
Analytically rigorous and comfortable making decisions with imperfect data in a rapidly evolving market
Motivated by Anthropic's mission and care about how frontier AI is deployed, not just how fast it grows

Nice To Haves

Led a startups or emerging-companies segment at a cloud, infrastructure, or AI platform company through a period of hypergrowth
Founder, operator, or venture experience, and understand the pressures and decision-making of a high-growth startup from the inside
Built ecosystem programs (startup credits, accelerator partnerships, investor programs) that meaningfully drove adoption of a developer platform
Hired and developed leaders who went on to run their own organizations
Experience leading through a market where the product and competitive landscape shifts quarterly

Responsibilities

Set the multi-year strategy for Anthropic's Strategic Startups business, including segmentation, coverage model, partnership structures, and investment priorities, and secure executive alignment on it
Build, lead, and scale a high-performing team of Account Executives, including hiring, coaching, and developing sellers and establishing a strong operating cadence across the team
Own the segment's revenue plan and P&L-level outcomes, including forecasting, capacity planning, quota design, and resource allocation, with direct accountability to GTM and company leadership
Personally lead Anthropic's relationships with a portfolio of the highest-leverage AI-native startups, engaging founders, CEOs, and CTOs on multi-year commercial, technical, and partnership agreements
Design and negotiate novel commercial and partnership structures (credits programs, strategic pricing, co-development, joint go-to-market) that create durable, mutually beneficial relationships with breakout companies
Serve as the executive voice of the startup segment inside Anthropic, bringing structured customer and market insight to Product, Engineering, Pricing, and Finance and influencing roadmap and packaging decisions accordingly
Partner with Enterprise Sales, Solutions, Partnerships, and Customer Success leadership to define handoffs, shared accounts, and escalation paths as startups scale into enterprise customers
Establish the systems of record for the segment: account planning, customer health, executive business reviews, deal governance, and the metrics leadership uses to run the business
Represent Anthropic externally with founders, investors, and at industry events, articulating our approach to safe, frontier AI and why it matters for companies building on it
Lean in to support building Anthropic's presence across the startup ecosystem.